Always Read The Instruction Manual
by Oranges and Cinnamon
Summary: Instead of learning English at school, Light learns Russian, and doesn't bother reading Ryuk's instructions in the Death Note - which causes problems. Oneshot. T for depressing themes.


**This idea had been bugging me for a while, although it turned out a darker than I'd anticipated...**

* * *

Outside the window, a soft thump announced the landing of a charcoal rectangle on the concrete paving. While the sound went unnoticed by most, an auburn haired individual, casually glancing out the window in an effort to relive his boredom, caught sight of the dark shape imposed on the otherwise floor. With hope of even a slight change in his so far monotonous life, Light Yagami headed over to the structure as the sound of the bell resonated through corridors packed with ecstatic children, all too eager to escape school at the end of the day.

The object – a book as it turned out to be – was light, relatively thin and filled with lines of paper. White crooked figures lined the front and back covers, although after puzzling over the figures for some time, Light decided the language in the cover was not one with which he was acquainted. Putting the strange script aside, Light swiftly shrugged his bag off his back, unzipped it, placed the book inside, closed the bag and returned it to his shoulders, as he began the stroll through the sub-urban houses.

"I'm home!" heralded his return, but to no response, so the intellectual of seventeen years marched up the staircase to his bedroom. Laying his bag on the table, he examined the note book that he had picked up not an hour earlier. Again, the foreign script adorning the front eluded him. The squatness of the letters was similar the Cyrillic alphabet from his studies of Russian. Having being given the chance to take either English or Russian when he first joined the school, he chose the slightly less common latter choice. He had hoped that the language would enable him to negotiate with the notorious mafia groups from the country when he worked enforcing the law in the future, although he was marginally regretting the decision now as he suspected the writing before was English.

A quick query online informed him that one of the words on the front was 'note'- the writing was indeed English. '_A notebook then.'_ He pondered. _'Might as well make use of it then – I've needed a place to jot down any extra work the teachers ask me to do.' _After all, he knew the book was a notebook, so why bother translating the rest of the words?

* * *

L was confused.

Within the last week, fifty-seven well-known academics and thirteen teachers at a school in Kanto had died of heart attacks. While he accepted that coincidences did occur, the detective believed such a phenomenal number of deaths could not all be down to chance. His mind listed through the many questions that flooded his mind.

How did they all die of heart attacks? L had gathered all the individual post-mortems after deeming the deaths unexplained, but only twenty three out of the seventy dead had underlying heart diseases. 62.84% of them should never have had a heart attack in the first place. Somehow, these heart attacks had been induced, using a technology that shouldn't exist.

That led on to L's next question: assuming the deaths were, in fact, murder, what motive did someone have to kill such a wide range of seeming harmless intellectuals? Perhaps a malicious student consumed with revenge? The idea was quickly dismissed. Such a student would most probably not have sufficient intellectual ability to create a way to kill with heart attacks, as if they disliked school to such an extent, they would just skip school. And if they were simply attending school whilst hiding their true feelings, then they would most likely be able to continue in such a way without any drastic action.

Also, the perpetrator had to be working alone, as L would have heard from his network of spies if any of the larger criminal organisations had planned such a large operation. No, there was only one person.

"Watari, please bring me the files on Daikoku Private Academy and Gamou Prep Academy." These were where the dead teachers were teaching.

"Of course, L".

* * *

Light's hands were shaking. His eyes flicked round the room. His nose flared as detached breaths nervously flitted in and out of his hunched chest.

After all, who wouldn't feel paranoid when someone was gradually killing off all the people who ever helped him?

For the last seven days, one by one, all the writers that he looked up to, all the teachers of whom he actually liked, had died. Only the people that actually inspired him were dying. Only the teachers that Light actually bothered to homework for - only the academics that Light had spent hours writing down when their next lecture were - only they were dying.

It was as if someone were gradually trying to eliminate all the people that stopped Light's life from being completely boring. Light wouldn't let them succeed, though. He would employ the skills he had used in many of his father's cases before hand, and he would find the person that was committing such heinous acts.

He pulled his new notebook out of his bag, and opened it to the latest page. Thinking back to the deaths that had plagued him for the last week, he started making a diagram, of everyone that had died, in relation to himself. Arranged in complex black ink spirals around the centre, where _Me _was written, lay the interlinking relations between all of the dead.

"This isn't enough…" Light muttered to himself. What use was just writing the people who were already dead if he wanted to save anyone?

Picking up a red ink pen, he began to write the names of anyone else that he thought could be a target in the future weeks. His determination to save them was so strong that he could picture the people in his mind as he was writing down their names.

Half an hour and one hundred and forty three names later, Light was satisfied he had written any potential victims down. Taking a last look at his diagram before he gave it to the police to help them, Light crossed through the _Me _written in the center, changing the word to _Light Yagami_ for clarity.

Fourty.

Finally done, Light headed down stairs to meet his father who had just returned home.

Thirty five.

The stairs creaked under his feet as he called out to his father in the hallway.

Thirty.

"Hey Dad! How was work?"

Twenty five.

"Not too bad, son. L contacted us about the case you were talking about."

Twenty.

"About that – I've put together a list of all the victims' relationships, and who I think will die next."

Fifteen.

"We're not sure it's foul play yet, son. They may not be victims."

Ten.

"Surely if the worlds-greatest-detective is interested it must be murder?"

Five.

"Okay Light, I'll give it in tomorrow. Thanks."

Zero.

Pain erupted around his chest. Black dots infested his vision. He could tell his father was calling his name, again and again, but nothing, nothing except the pure agony of his heart registered. He dropped the black book he had been carrying as death encompassed him.

No pulse could be found by his distraught father, and only the faint tear drop running across his chin showed that Light Yagami had ever been alive.

* * *

In the years to come, L would solve many more cases. But while he correctly unravelled each and every crime, at the back of his mind the unsolved case of Light Yagami, the boy whose death marked the end of the academic killings, would linger, haunting his conscience. The one case that got away, and the black book that was the only remaining evidence that the case ever happened.

* * *

**Let me know what you think!**

**Oranges and Cinnamon.**


End file.
